KARACHI: Court seeks govt’s help on direction to EC
By Shujaat Ali Khan
KARACHI, Nov 19: The Sindh High Court issued notices on a writ petition on Tuesday to ascertain whether it can issue a direction to the Election Commission in respect of an allegedly erroneous result after the constitution of election tribunals.
The notices, addressed to the Election Commission and a federal government law officer, were issued by a division bench, comprising Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Amir Hani Muslim, on a writ petition filed by a Sindh Assembly candidate through Advocate K. M. Nadeem.
Petitioner Murad Ali Shah said he had been successfully contesting elections from PS-20 (Naushero Feroze-II) since 1971 and served as a provincial minister for over a decade. He lost the October 10 polls by 200 votes because of partiality on the part of presiding officer of one of the polling stations. The officer first issued a result which twice mentioned the name of his rival, Abdul Haq Bhurt alias Dost Mohammad Bhurt, as having secured 232 and 231 votes. Instead of specifying the number of votes polled by all 10 candidates, the result listed only five candidates and the number of votes obtained by them.
A second result was presently issued when the mistake was pointed out to the presiding officer. It carried his name but mentioned as “nil” the number of votes obtained by him. Five of the candidates were ignored again.
The petitioner said both the results were patently wrong, in fact as well as in law. The omission to name all the candidates had rendered the results invalid. His own tally was 231 but it was credited to some “Dost Mohammad Bhurt,” which was actually another name of Abdul Haq Bhurt. If 231 votes were added to the total number of his votes, he emerged as the successful candidate.
The “error apparent on the face of the record” was brought to the notice of the Election Commission twice under sections 103 and 103AA of the Representation of People Act, but to no avail. Both the provisions are meant to enable the EC to promptly rectify errors, but the Commission failed to discharge its obligation and consider the petitioner’s plea for a recount to clear the confusion. He has been left with no option but to approach the high court for a speedy and efficacious remedy.
The court issued a notice to the EC for Nov 26 and asked a deputy attorney- general to assist it on that date.
APPEAL ADMITTED: The Sindh High Court admitted on Tuesday a National Accountability Bureau appeal against the acquittal of former federal minister of commerce Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar and former secretary commerce Brigadier Aslam Hayat (retired) in a reference involving bulk rice export at less than market rates.
Co-accused Salman Farooqui, Aslam Hayat’s successor as commerce secretary, and a former chairman of the Rice Export Corporation, Ishaq Shaikh, were both sentenced by an accountability court of Karachi under section 31 of the NAB Ordinance for fleeing justice. The main accused, who contested the reference, were both acquitted.
The NAB appeal against the accountability court acquittal order, filed by its deputy prosecutor-general Mohammed Anwar Tariq, came up before an SHC division bench, comprising Justice Shabbir Ahmed and Justice Sadiq Leghari, on Tuesday. Admitting it, the bench ordered that bailable warrants in the sum of Rs1 million each be issued against both the respondents. They have been given 15 days to submit bail bonds.
The crux of the charge in the reference is that the minister and the secretary awarded a rice export contract to two fake, non-existent firms. The real exporter, who was a friend of former federal minister Asif Ali Zardari, sold the procured Irri rice at the rate of about $232 a ton, which was considerably less than the prevailing international market price of $282-292 a ton. The deal caused a loss of Rs70 million to the public exchequer, according to the prosecution.
